Hydrants connected to water lines provide water outlets throughout a community for use in fighting fires. Such hydrants are of necessity located in public areas where they are highly accessible and readily noticeable so that they may be quickly located and accessed by fire fighters in an emergency. However, this accessibility also exposes the fire hydrants to vandalism and to unauthorized use, particularly in urban areas where they are frequently opened during the summertime by adults in order to allow children to play and cool off in the water from the hydrant. Such vandalism and unauthorized use can damage the hydrant thereby creating a greater risk of danger to the neighborhood due to inoperative fire hydrants which will create a fire fighting problem.
The unauthorized use of fire hydrants also costs the public additional funds in order to pump the water which escapes from a hydrant during unauthorized use. The extent to which fire hydrants are used in an unauthorized manner during the summertime is often so severe that it causes lower water pressure throughout the neighborhood thereby greatly increasing the risk of damage to the neighborhood by fire due to the inadequate water supply resulting therefrom.
It has previously been known to provide for a fire hydrant which could only be operated by persons in possession of a key member, so that the hydrant outlets were normally covered and said covers could only be removed when the hydrant was unlocked, and the hydrant valve nut member which controls the opening and closing of the hydrant valve is located on top of the hydrant and is concealed. Such an arrangement is shown by U.S. Pat. No. 2,869,576 to W. Kennedy. It is also known to provide a fire hydrant arrangement where the nut that operates the valve is concealed and requires a special wrench in order to engage the nut through a limited access, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,556,131 to R. Diaz. U.S. Pat. No. 3,935,877 to P. Franceschi also provides for a tamper proof locking system for a standard fire hydrant which includes a cap assembly that fits over the valve stem of the hydrant and can only be operated by means of a special wrench. U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,771, issued to A. Borenstein, provides for a fire hydrant cap and cover assembly unit with a wrench for operating same, the interior of the cap is threaded and releaseably attachable to the fire hydrant water outlet and the exterior cover is rotatably mounted on the cap through means of an annular groove and bead, with the cover rotatably protecting the cap removal, and with a wrench which is capable of passing through an opening in the exterior cover in order to engage the cap and remove same from the water outlet port.
Removal of the fire hydrant water outlet port cap in the prior art can be quite difficult during an emergency and introduction of any foreign objects under the rotating cap makes it most difficult to remove the cap for hydrant operation.
The present device differs from those previously known in that the present device requires an external pressurized fluid providing device which engages the fire hydrant and pumps pressurized fluid through a pathway in the upper portion of the fire hydrant and engages a turbinelike impeller and then said pressurized fluid pressure rotates the impeller, said impeller is connected to a worm gear and turns the worm gear which then opens the hydrant's water main valve. Later the flow of fluid is then reversed in order to turn the turbinelike impeller in the opposite direction thereby causing the worm gear to close the hydrant's water main valve. The pressurized fluid used may be either pressurized liquid or pressurized gas.
Such a device would require the operator of the fire hydrant to be in possession of pressurized fluid equipment as is already provided for on modern fire trucks and which is not readily available to members of the general public. Therefore it would be much more difficult for a member of the general public to operate the fire hydrant of the present invention than it would be for a member of the general public to operate one of the fire hydrant's known in the prior art, as the prior art fire hydrants all involve operation of the fire hydrant by means of a key or wrench mechanism which past experience has shown is easily overcome by the general public.
A cylinder and piston drive means, or other well known drive means, can be used in place of the Impeller and worm gear drive means without departing from the scope of the invention.